Inside the Braves with MLB.com's Mark Bowman

Braves promote Canizares

This morning’s surprise came courtesy of the lineup board, which showed that that Barbaro Canizares will be batting cleanup during this afternoon’s series finale against the Pirates.

Canizares, who was hitting .344 with eight homers and a .533 slugging percentage with Triple-A Gwinnett, could play first base until Casey Kotchman returns from the disabled list. He also could be used as a designated hitter when the Braves spend both of the next two weekends in an American League park.

To make room for Canizares, the Braves placed Greg Norton on the 15-day disabled list with a strained right ankle. Norton has hit .098 in 41 at-bats this year.

The 29-year-old Canizares has always shown the ability to swing the bat. But his rise toward the Majors had been delayed by his defensive shortcomings.

Canizares will wear No.25, which most of you remember was worn by Andruw Jones throughout his career in Atlanta.

48 Comments

Good move. His offensive production potential outweighs his defensive liabilities at this point. I feel much more comfortable with him against righties (.355) but he has shown improvement vs. lefties (.298). We could sure use an offensive spark this aft. Maybe he’s the guy.

Norton was placed on the DL for ankle or sucking? Probably the latter. Canizares is a butcher in the field, but can Prado or Norton be that much better? Probably not. And it’ll be nice to have his bat in there. He will DH this weekend unless Bobby is insane.

This is non-related to the post, but Is anyone else sick of Escobar’s mental shortcomings? His lapse in defense and base running mistakes are getting ridiculous. The league is starting to realize they can deek him on the base path or catch him napping. I’ve been meaning to vent about this for a while and last night was the final straw for me. Lucky for him he hits .300 and drives in runners – or it would REALLY be a train wreck.
It’s one thing to make enemies among opposing players with bat flips and flashiness. It’s even another thing to peek at signs and the catcher’s location (what prompted him to get thrown at a few days ago against Milwaukee when the ball hit the bat and he rolled around on the ground like he had just been drilled in the hands). All that annoys me but I can live with it.
But get your head in the game man. I can count over a handful of costly base running mistakes and defensive errors in the first half of the season. One of these days it’s really going to cost the team (like it did last night).
*steps off of soap box*

In my earlier post I wanted to ask Mark if anyone had spoken to Escobar yet but I think I know the answer. Jurrjens was quite ticked off. I think the Braves will put up with his schtick as long as he keeps hitting.

Neverwhere, if Canizares didn’t look bad in Syracuse that game, it was his shining moment defensively. I see him every day in Gwinnett, including BP/warmup and I’ll be honest, the fat kid on your little league team that got stuck at first does a better job. He even fields practice grounders to the side. Pray they don’t hit any at him besides big hoppers and slow rollers.
He can absolutely rake though, so right now, vs. Norton, Canizares is a very good option. We may have seen the last game with Norton on the active roster in Atlanta.
Defensively the Braves have all of a sudden become below average. Chipper doesn’t get to much anymore, Hernandez is a hack and Escobar seems to have grown ADHD lately, KJ is OK, Kotchman is the only guy who can play a lick of 1B, GA gets to nothing, and McLouth has been exposed by his old team as the center field version of Will Clark. Remember number of errors is not the only consideration. In the words of Boog, “Yikes.”

Oh, Will Clark had a phobia about throwing the ball to second base from his first base position and thus almost NEVER turned a 3-6-3 DP. McLouth has absolutely no urgency defensively either. By the time he gets to the ball they already have the extra base, so at that point there is no reason for him to throw I guess. I have no idea where his Gold Glove votes came from.

And Ross just had an incredible at bat, too. This is crazy… not that Ross is bad, just, this isn’t what I expected from the back end of the lineup, especially today… I expected all runs to be made from 1-4.

Norton needs to go. He can’t play anywhere in the field and it’s not great having your bench guy hitting under .100. Considering what our offense has been doing, I would rather have a scarecrow at 1st than Norton.
And bravomania.. sick of Escobar? He’s still a young guy and he has his mental shortcomings but he’s a good defender, one of the best infield arms in the NL. Plus his “flashiness” shows that one of the most anemic offenses in baseball actually does have a pulse from time to time.

Javier Vazquez just became the first NL pitcher to strike out 100 batters. Good for him. As far as Escobar goes, ya, he annoys the heck out of me sometimes. But he’s still one of our best players. So I can deal with it.

Man could we suck any worse offensively? If we score one run, thats a big offensive day. the only way we win a game is if Chipper or Brian hits a homer late. We are we the only team in the league that swings at every first pitch? Somebody (TP I suspect) has these batters thinking they have to be agressive 100% of the time and opposing teams/pitchers are aware of that. We have journeyman pitchers who are killing us with our lack of pitch selection. I mean watch Frechy. He has no clue whether the pitch is even close before he decided to swing.

The 2nd and 3rd runs are on Johnson, because he’s to lazy to dive for a ball, which would of been out #2. Don’t forget Brian Knight, he needs to be reviewed by the commissioner’s office, because he has done nothing but screw the Braves and the Pirates this whole series.

billreef, normally I let the vitriol against Francoeur slide, but you are unjustified in singling out the only player who had more than one hit and also drove in our only run today.I mean, the first three batters went 0-11 with 3 Ks, but you’re gonna talk about the guy who it’s apparently en vogue to rail against even when he produced the most?Come on, man, be better than that.

He saved McCann for hitting with a chance to tie or win. I’m just sick and tired of cavalier lazy defense in late innings letting runners take bases at will, then turning around and being the least aggressive team on the planet on the base paths. They aren’t good enough to jog to first, and sit tight until a big hit comes, and they aren’t good enough to give away all of those free bases defensively. It comes from the top or they wouldn’t be doing it. He still manages like we have a top playoff team and are good enough to not need every edge. They aren’t and they do. If it bothered him we could tell because they wouldn’t keep doing it.
This is baseball, not winning baseball. The guys need to watch a couple hundred Tampa Bay Ray games from the last two seasons to see what good aggressive, hungry teams do. The Braves look more like a bunch of guys who think they are better than they are, thinking they can just turn it on when they need it. Major denial here…a serious reality break is in order.

Yeah I agree with some of that, but maybe Bobby is getting on them a little more these days. We were pretty aggressive on the basepaths today when there was agree someone to be aggressive. Diaz had 2 stolen bases and it was our first game this year with 3 total.
I don’t think LaRoche getting 2nd base was anyone’s fault. Maybe Ross for trying to frame an outside pitch. I’m sure in his mind he knew that we had to get that out since the offense could only get 1 run against the PITTSBURGH PIRATES. 2 runs yesterday. But since this series had lines that read like a great postseason series, I think it shows a lot about where we are right now. We’re no better than the Pirates, and McLouth will probably not be enough. Maybe things will turn around once Kotchman returns.

did you see the game last night? I am not going to use one game to evaluate the guy, besides I wasn’t even really against Frenchy. I think the Braves Major league club ruined his swing. He is just the deer caught in the headlights.

The whole day was ominious is Bobby Cox as a rookie hitting cleanup and giving the day off to McCann. Yes I know about a day after a night game but come on. McCann had the rain out game off vs the cubs, next he had sunday off in Hanson’s 1st start. He not tired and McCann a competitor he wanted to be out there. And with no protection for Chipper he got nothing to hit. I don’t blame the pirates, I woulld pitch to him either. I love Bobby but that was foolish. Way to take the bat right out of his hand.

Braves fans please stop blaming it all on Frenchy. I’m upset with Francouer also but we have a black hole in left field and have had that since Sheffield left. 5yrs AGO. YES 5yrs AGO. Mondesi/Jordan/Langerhans/Harris/Diaz/Anderson are all past there prime or just a fourth outfielder at best. And 1st base has no power. Until McLouth got here Francouer was the only one who has any talent. Strong arm and can cover some ground. Yes he swings a wWAYY to may balls but so does Diaz and Johnson. Johnson is actually hitting worse than Francouer. The braves have way more problems that what most care to admit

billreef,
Put that way, your post makes more sense. I guess I’m just sick of him being singled out for the whole team’s inconsistency (aside from the pitching). I’d love to see his aggressiveness come back even if it means hitting .260 again (with more walks, though).
lamar1banks2 (hey, Lamar’s my first name),
McCann got the day off because he caught the night game last night. Standard practice. Interesting point about Sheffield leaving a huge gap though… I miss the days when we had a consistently solid outfield.

I understand Why McCann got the day off, as I pointed out, I really do get that. My problem is he just had 2 of the last 5 days off and is our number 4 hitter on this team. Like it or not, McCann gets Chipper better pitches to hit. And Bobby Cox can’t put a rookie as the clean up hitter in his 1st game. Thus Chipper got nothing to hit today and tried to make something happen and hit balls that he normally won’t go after. That decision clearly affects how you are pitched. I know if I were the pirates manager I would unintensionally/intentsionally walk Chipper to get to a rookie in his 1st game.

The summary of this season in one sentence – “While hitting .224 during this nine-game homsestand, the Braves managed to lose each of the four games that their starting pitchers allowed two runs or fewer.”
After reading that, does anyone else want to play in traffic? Just saying…

lamarbanks..
bobby makes moves like that to show the young kids that they have his support. how awesome would you feel if one of the great managers of all time put you in the cleanup spot on your first day in the bigs? He did have a hit today and Chipper’s bad day can’t be completely attributed to who was hitting behind him. But while saying that, I’m not blind to see that no one else picks up the offense if Chipper and/or McCann are having an off-day.

I respect Bobby’s decisions, but there is a time and place for that. For instance if he wanted hit Schafer lead off opening night, no harm no foul, but in the next 18 games we play the orioles, a 2nd place cin reds team with the best era in the national league, a red hot Boston Red Sox team in 1st place, the NY Yankees in 2nd place and the 1st place Phillies.

No gimmes in the near future and with a struggling pirates team with a worst line-up than we have, we need to put ourselves in the best chance to win. esp with the outstanding pitching vasquez and jurrgens gave us.

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